Planet Scoop! Four Barrel to open in the Portola on Saturday 26th Oct

Yes, you heard it here first. We just got off the phone with Four Barrel and they’ve told us they will be opening their Portola coffee shop on Saturday 26th October.

Finally, we get an awesome coffee shop to our neighborhood and finally I can tell people when we are getting it. Over the past few months everyone has been asking… When is Four Barrel going to open? News they were planning a shop on San Bruno Avenue broke September 2012! So what took so darn long?

The Portola asked this question to Hein, one of the coffee professors at Four Barrel. He said that owner, Jeremy Tooker, wanted the focus of this new store to be all about sustainability and to create the most ecological café in the world. However, this has been an ambitious goal. Hein told us “…this meant a huge amount of research. Everytime someone does something new, they have to invent. So many new forks in the road and cool decisions they had to make, which led to more forks.” he also added that “Jeremy is a perfectionist and a freak. That naturally leads to longer timeframes.” You can read more about the plans for the shop in an interview with Jeremy here.

So yes, it took a long time, over a year. But who cares? We are now in the present and Oct 26th is just 17th days away! The Planet tried to get inside and take some photos today, but nobody is around. We’ve been assured we can get our camera inside soon and show everyone what it looks like. For now, we snuck a picture from their Instagram feed which shows the reuse of an old Hetch Hetchy turbine pipe as part of the ceiling décor.

The Portola ceiling is almost done. The wood was an old Hetch Hetchy turbine pipe, which is why it is curved. What are we calling it these days? Heirloom is the new reclaimed was the old salvaged…?